Duminy's devastating blow mars a near perfect day

A TRAINING mishap last night put a dent in South Africa's early dominance of the first Test, with J.P. Duminy rupturing his Achilles tendon after slipping while running at the Gabba after stumps.

The Proteas ended the opening day of the series at 2-255 with Hashim Amla (90) and Jacques Kallis (84) well and truly set. However, the shine was taken off their commanding hold over the Australian bowlers when Duminy slumped to the ground and had to be carried off. He will be out for six months. The 28-year-old had been on the field stretching out his legs after a day spent watching his teammates pile on the runs and took a fall on the Gabba grass.

''He obviously slipped and hurt his ankle doing a training run. It's his left ankle. He's just been rushed off to the hospital,'' a Proteas spokeswoman said.

While the tourists are on top, losing Duminy will be a blow. A star of their 2008-09 tour, when the Proteas won the series 2-1, he has only this year regained his place in the side and, due to their abundance of quality batsmen, found himself at No.7 in the order. His extra value lay in his right-arm off-spin, an attribute that was rendered more important when South Africa surprisingly opted to leave out leg-spinner Imran Tahir in favour of a fourth fast bowler, the debutant Rory Kleinveldt.

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Even if Duminy had been able to bat, South Africa would not have been able to call on the services of a runner for him, as a recently introduced law prohibits the use of runners in international cricket.

''J.P. was obviously going to bowl some off-spin for us, so hopefully he'll be fine,'' said opener Alviro Petersen before Duminy's injury was diagnosed. ''We're pretty comfortable with our bowling attack and our team. Rory obviously coming in, we felt that he offered more and we were in a great position to leave a guy like Imran out. We felt that Rory obviously could offer some more on that wicket this morning when we got here. It wasn't as hard as we thought it would be, and it probably lessens the load on Jacques Kallis as well.''

Petersen, meanwhile, admitted he was taken aback by Australia's bowling tactics, which largely failed to trouble South Africa's top four. It took a loose shot from an unremarkable Nathan Lyon off-break to dismiss Petersen. ''I was surprised they didn't bowl as much short balls as we expected,'' he said.

Despite the Duminy setback, South Africa left the Gabba with their tails up. ''It's a good start for us,'' Petersen said. ''It's important that we start again, make sure that we put today behind us. We've obviously got a few more batters to come in and hopefully we can get a decent first-innings total and put some pressure on Australia.''